The Data School Coaches

Head Coach

Andy Kriebel

Andy, a five-time Tableau Zen Master, stumbled upon Tableau in 2007 when he was desperate for help to quickly create dashboards using SSAS cubes. Since then, it’s been Andy’s personal mission to help as many people as possible “see and understand” their data with Tableau, which is the focus of his role as Head Coach at The Information Lab’s Data School. Data is knowledge, but Andy believes that seeing data is insight.

In August 2009 he launched vizwiz.com, which provides examples of data visualization best practices, methods for improving existing work, and tips and tricks with Tableau Software. He writes two weekly series: Makeover Monday and Tableau Tip Tuesday. He also writes datavizdoneright.com, a site created to highlight data visualisation best practices.

Head Coach

Carl Allchin

After a one day Tableau training course from The Information Lab several years ago, Carl became a Tableau addict and decided to make it his full time job. Carl joined The Information Lab in September 2014.

In his own time, Carl runs the blog Data Jedi Ninja that focuses on Tableau tips, tricks and visualisation experimentation. This allows him to visualise sporting data, especially basketball, and have a global discussion about what he finds along the way.

Additional Coaches

Chris Love

Chris has an extensive background in data analysis spanning 10 years; initially working in SAS and SQL he was asked to evaluate an early version of Alteryx 8 years ago and hasn’t looked back since.

The pinnacle of his career so far came at Alteryx’s Inspire Conference in 2013 where, pitted against nine other Alteryx super-users, he competed in his first Alteryx “Grand-Prix”. Despite some stiff competition Chris raced through three business problems, against the clock, and totaled the best time overall to become the first Grand Prix winner outside the USA.

Chris is an Alteryx Ace, a Tableau Zen Master, an Alteryx Certified Professional and a Tableau Desktop Certified Trainer.

Emma Whyte

Emma has worked in data analysis since finishing her MA and started working life using traditional tools of Excel and SPSS. Frustrated with the amount of time it took to produce reports she quickly found Tableau and realised it was perfect for letting end users understand and explore their data. Emma ended up training her colleagues the tricks of the Tableau trade and made using the software a core business function. She also set up and managed Tableau Server and wonders how organisations use Tableau without it.

Away from creating Tableau Vizzes with American Football data, Emma also enjoys cycling, running, baking cakes and drinking coffee.

Emma is a Tableau Desktop Certified Trainer and a Tableau Server Qualified Associate.

Craig Bloodworth

Craig first discovered the power of Tableau through constant frustration with data report authoring using classic spreadsheet applications. Craig joined The Information Lab in 2011 and has been helping people install, understand and create exciting visualisations with Tableau.

Craig has published dozens of workbooks to Tableau Public, knows Tableau Server inside & out, has developed community releases for Tableau including a Tableau Chrome plugin, web data connectors, and geopacks for enhanced mapping.

Outside of Tableau Craig lives in York with his partner and their 3 year old daughter. Being a local food enthusiast you’re sure to find him browsing a North Yorkshire farmers’ market in search of seasonal, local produce.

Jonathan MacDonald

Jonathan started his Tableau journey several years ago when The Information Lab introduced Tableau at the business information firm where he worked. Having recently moved from overseeing a team of financial services research analysts to looking after digital marketing and production, he immediately saw the opportunity to depart from delivering data products to clients in cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, and instead bring the data to life with Tableau.

Outside of work, Jonathan enjoys the typical pastimes of an expat South African – rugby and barbecues – as well as tinkering with Linux servers and other bits of technology.

Robin Kennedy

Robin found Tableau through frustration with the limitations or long development cycles of more established tools and so went on the hunt for an alternative. The addition of Tableau to his toolset has really enhanced his ability to engage and enlighten his audience through visualisations, and enable users to intuitively explore their own data. With an eye on Tufte and Few’s information design methodologies, Tableau’s capabilities allow him to quickly get the visual design in his head onto the screen.

Away from Tableau and data warehouses, Robin enjoys home cooking, travelling to exotic destinations with his wife, and playing euro strategy games.

Robin is a Tableau Desktop Certified Trainer and an Alteryx Certified Trainer.

Tom Brown

Tom founded The Information Lab after discovering a passion for helping people make sense of data. This passion was fuelled by five years of working on ‘Traditional’ Business Intelligence projects which in Tom’s own words ‘just never seemed to be what people actually wanted’. After a long night evaluating Tableau in 2008, Tom realised that the Business Intelligence world had changed and set about becoming an evangelist and product specialist in Tableau.

When not working with Tableau, Tom spends his time juggling the needs of a young family and a reasonable golf handicap. Luckily, he can also juggle.

Tom is the Data School Founder, a Tableau Desktop Certified Trainer and an Alteryx Certified Professional.

Recent Blog Posts

Our team does a lot of blogging! Follow their projects and progress every week

Last week was our first week-long project – creating individual entries for Tableau’s international Iron Viz competition. In this blog, I talk through my final submission. With my project lead coming up next week, I also reflect on the challenges of working to make dashboards over a week.

Using colour is one of the most powerful ways to bring attention to key details within a visualization. Using big numbers is a favourite within the business world and adding a colour to denote positive or negative change is a quick and easy way to quickly communicate...

Set actions are a great way to add interactivity into your dashboard. I recently learnt how you could use a set action to show the difference from the average and thought this would be useful in a lot of visualisations. The example below is using Superstore (US) data....

In an earlier blog post I started to talk about some of the first steps to take when approaching an iterative design process, and in case you missed it you can find it here: https://www.thedataschool.co.uk/ryan-lowers/dont-be-a-hater-be-an-iterator-part-1/. In this...

In this post I’ll be using the superstore data set to introduce the idea of aggregation works within Tableau, and how it can be used in creating simple charts. What is Aggregation? Aggregation in simple terms is a calculation of some kind that is applied to the most...